Clean Kill

by Conrad Johnson

Struggling writer, Sam Uhl, gives up trying to find a publisher for his debut novel so he decides to hunt down the literary agent who he believes unfairly led him along. A wryly satirical look into the writing/killing process in today's rapidly changing book publishing industry.

94 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 4, 2012

About the author

I READ NOTHING BUT SKIES AND THE BIBLE THESE DAYS.

Reviews

[John Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this from Amazon under the title "Jesus Told Me To Kill Her". I assume it's the same book. No one peers as intensely into the dark heart of the human soul as Conrad Johnson. If violence begets violence, then we are all doomed. But we know that already. "Jesus Told Me To Kill Her" renders the parallel pursuit of the writing and the killing arts masterfully. It's an adventure we wish not to take but cannot refuse. The final monopoly of the reader's consciousness is not so much the result of the gruesome story but the amazing writing, the completely original turns of phrase, the WTF epiphanies. Conrad Johnson probably won't get the recognition he deserves __ hardly a surprise in the Pollyannaish literary environment which the corporatization of creativity has submerged us in. But someday in the distant future, when whatever pathetic creatures crawl out of the rubble and find his writings mixed in with unreadable disk drives and CD-Rs, his works will take their rightful place beside the paranoid nihilism of Nietzsche, the moribund but deadly exactitude of Camus, and the existential angst and self-loathing of Sartre. Conrad Johnson is perspicacious and prescient. He is the master of the blow-the-MF-away genre, the man who chronicled our lethal addiction to self-destructive violence and the total devaluation of the human organism in a tsunami of narcissism and childish worship of guns.

[Dorrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sam Uhl is tired of being rejected by agents, publishers and anyone else associated with the literary establishment. He becomes fed up with one publisher in particular, and decides a trip is in order.

While very short, I truly reveled in this book's dark premise. It seemed like irony stalked the main character and continued to mock him to the last page. A very dark, chilly, at times funny read that drips with so much sarcasm that you may need a napkin.